Intellian has announced plans to begin production on a range of dedicated user terminals for use with the OneWeb low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications network, to be ready for initial deliveries in 2021.
OneWeb recently completed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy process initiated earlier this year with the sale of the business to a UK government-led consortium, and is poised to imminently recommence its satellite launch programme.
The company is now focused on scaling its satellite constellation to prepare to begin commercial services starting at the end of next year, with coverage extending to the UK, Alaska, Canada, Northern Europe, Greenland, Iceland, and the Arctic Seas.
Intellian had originally announced a partnership with OneWeb to build terminals for both the fixed enterprise and maritime markets in 2019 and has now committed to pressing forward with those plans under the new ownership regime.
A range of dedicated OneWeb user terminal types with a variety of antenna sizes are expected to be developed, while Intellian will also add the ability to adapt its NX series terminals to operate on OneWeb’s LEO constellation in the future with an upgrade option.
“We are excited to deploy Intellian’s industry leading LEO technology into this user terminal development to enable customers to harness OneWeb’s fascinating network capabilities,” said Eric Sung, President and CEO, Intellian.
“Testing has shown excellent results and we are fast approaching this technology becoming a reality for users across many market sectors. The OneWeb constellation is a significant development for the industry and for potential users, and is perfectly aligned with our stated commitment of empowering connectivity: through our partnership, our terminals will bring customers high-bandwidth, low-latency data on an unprecedented global scale.”
OneWeb currently expects to launch 36 satellites from the Vostochny spaceport in Siberia later this month, joining 74 already in orbit out of the 648 Ku-band satellites planned for the full initial constellation.
